Harawi is a cycle of twelve songs scored for soprano and piano composed in 1945. Harawi (known to Spanish speakers as yaraví) designates a song about a fated love that ends in the death of both lovers. Messiaen remarked that “it is the story of Tristan and Isolde.”

The surrealistic text of Harawi is Messiaen’s own.

Using the musical structures Messiaen had created for Harawi, he built massive phrases in these songs, expanding space and time, creating extreme tenderness, vastness, clarity and abysses.

In Harawi both lovers are not only human, but beings, which transform again and again. Destruction, pain, death, creation, joy, dance and love are not final – they are all everchanging particles of our interwoven cosmic existence.

Sarah Maria Sun is one of the foremost singers in the contemporary music scene with a repertoire of more than 900 compositions from the 20th and 21st centuries, including more than 320 world premieres. She was nominated for singer of the year by Opernwelt in 2017 for her role as Elsa in Sciarrino’s monodrama Lohengrin and as Gwen in 4.48 Psychosis by Philip Venables. From 2007-2014, she was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of 7 singers that has been one of the world’s leading pioneers of contemporary music for 30 years.

Sun’s discography includes more than 30 CDs, some of which have been awarded prizes. Her album “modern lied” (mode records) with the pianist Jan Philip Schulze won the “Coups de Cœur Musique Contemporaine” in 2018 from the Académie Charles Cros.

Stefka Perifanova is an interpreter of classical repertoire as well as of modern music up through the 21st century. She has won several international competitions and is active as a soloist, chamber musician and Lied accompanist throughout Europe, Korea, Columbia and the USA. She is a member of the ensemble Camerata Variabile and co-founder of the Absolut Trio, with whom she regularly commissions new works.

“This stunning album … features the still-young and somewhat outré German soprano Sarah Maria Sun… From the first notes of La ville qui dormait to the dying piano sound in Dans le noir, this is a performance that will absolutely rivet you… This clearly goes straight to the top of performances of this unusual and somewhat difficult song cycle…” – Lynn René Bayley, Art Music Lounge, 15 August 2019

Deluxe, specially priced 2-LP set with gatefold cover.

Includes 12-page book with complete lyrics plus extensive text on Harawi by Siglind Brun, including copious illustrations and musical examples.

Complete song texts included.

Pressed at Pallas in Germany.

NB: there is no CD format release, only the 2-LP set and digital.